For the third consecutive year, we are grading Publicis Media as a whole because it taps on talents and resources from its media agencies. So this review will consist of Zenith, Starcom, Perfomics and Spark Foundry.

Publicis Groupe APAC CEO Jane Lin-Baden had a successful year after being promoted, helping Zenith to overtake Mindshare in Campaign’s agency rankings with its Pepsi win and being one of the most awarded agencies at Campaign’s Agency of the Year 2022.

Publicis Media also performed well in DEI as one of the more progressive agencies and created impactful work.

Category 2022 2021 Business B+   B+ Innovation B B DEI and sustainability B- B- Creativity and effectiveness C+ C Management B+ B+ *2021 scores adjusted to new numeric scale. Read about the grading methodology

Business (B+)

Publicis Media says its growth for 2022 exceeded expectations, pointing to how Publicis Groupe paid out high bonuses after recording a 10% revenue growth. Actual figures for revenue and organic growth remain confidential.

The 2022 APAC media agency rankings, which tap into data from consultancy R3, support this claim. Zenith held off Mindshare to finish in first place with an estimated YTD net revenue of $36.8 million and an estimated YTD win revenue of $37.2 million. This was an achievement, having finished in sixth place in 2021 in R3’s new business league.

Despite having less than half the wins Mindshare achieved, the agency’s capture of PepsiCo’s business gave it the edge. We are told the agency is proud to win this pitch because it was an APAC-led pitch under its ‘Power of one’ model, as Pepsi had a different brief for China, Southeast Asia and India.

Another boost for the agency was growing its relationship with L’Oreal, adding the beauty giant‘s ecommerce business in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam to its existing media remit for the brand in China.

Aside from Pepsi and L’Oreal, Publicis held on to four significant clients in Singapore Tourism Board, Singapore Government, AB Inbev, and Mondelez.

While Publicis defended Mondelez in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, the agency lost the regional remit for the brand and Nestle in Vietnam to GroupM. Other losses include LT Group, National Rugby League, and Globe Telecom. The losses happened for various reasons, including not participating in a review, geographical realignment, commercial disagreements, and re-balancing the client roster.

Aside from Zenith, Starcom was the next best-performing agency in Publicis Media’s stable. The agency rose from second-last place in 2021 to fifth place in 2022. Starcom’s estimated YTD net revenue is $25.3 million, and its estimated YTD win revenue is $26.3 million with 40 wins.

However, Spark Foundry slipped down the rankings by one place to 10th, with $10.8 million estimated YTD net revenue and $11.2 million estimated YTD win revenue with eight wins.

While Publicis Media progressed significantly from 2021 and Zenith finished top of the media agency rankings, its combined wins fall short when compared to Mindshare. We are keeping the grade at ‘excellent’.

Innovation (B)

Publicis continued to apply market-specific innovations in 2022, some of which have the potential to be scaled globally. The agency developed Creative Vault, a solution that uses AI to monitor and analyse competitor activity in China's rapidly growing digital marketing industry. 

The product is designed to automate the process of systematic reporting, capturing over 50 platforms and publishers with 15 different ad formats. The product dashboard provides a standardised view of competitor strategies and content. 

For allowing brands to move beyond imprecise ad-hoc monitoring methods such as hand-captured screenshots of brand activity, the product was awarded a Campaign’s Tech MVP 2022 product award. The agency says clients like L’Oreal and Uniqlo use it in China.

To help clients optimise their online product catalogue and grow the agency’s product offering with an integrated commerce platform, Publicis acquired Profitero, a commerce intelligence platform boosted with predictive intelligence capabilities. 

The agency also launched its gaming and Web3 offering, Publicis Play in Southeast Asia, built in partnership with Web3 marketing consultancy Mana Partners. Led by the chief transformation officer for the region, Ian Loon, the platform wants to be a gateway for advertisers looking to invest in gaming and esports. 

Other partnerships in 2022 included partnering with Epsilon and Lotame to supercharge its Growth OS platform and integrating Lotame's Panorama ID for audience targeting. The Growth OS houses the agency’s data and tools for its staff globally and in every discipline. Publicis also collaborated with Playground XYZ to measure and optimise digital media buying based on how much attention an ad receives.

We are keeping the grade at ‘very good’ because of APAC-focused innovations like Creative Vault and are keen to see more.

DEI & Sustainability (B-)

In 2021, we stated we would like the agency to share comprehensive statistics about diversity and internal survey data showing employee satisfaction with the state of DEI within the company. 

The agency has done so this year. Publicis Media reports that women made up 57% of its workforce in APAC in 2022. In specific countries like India, it is 36%, and in China, it is 76%.

At the leadership level, 48% of roles are occupied by women like CEO Singapore and Southeast Asia, Amrita Randhawa, CEO South Asia Anupriya Acharya, APAC CEO for PMX Ching Ian Wee and chief product officer Sapna Nemani. This ranges from 32% in India to 65% in China, where APAC CEO Jane Lin-Baden sits. In 2022, the agency promoted eight staff to senior leadership positions in Australia and New Zealand, seven of whom were women.

With a target of 45% of women in leadership positions by 2025 and a 50/50 overall gender split, the agency has achieved its targets. While its female representation is progressive, the agency’s next target should be bringing up the numbers in India and being careful of creating a rare gender imbalance in China that over- favours women.

The agency has group-wide and local DEI initiatives like Viva Women, Women in Tech (a sub-group of VivaWomen! for women in technology and digital-related fields), and a Women to Watch (a different initiative from Campaign’s Women to Watch) programme to recognise female talent. Viva Women brings together women and their allies in the agency to promote women's professional and personal development around leadership, work-life integration, mentoring and career development.

These programmes seem to have paid off, with Piyee Wong of Zenith Malaysia winning the Southeast Asia New Business Development Person of the Year at Campaign’s Agency of the Year 2022.

There are also resource groups for its LGBTQ staff, like Egalite and Embrace, a group to tackle racial inequality.

When discussing sustainability, Publicis uses tools like ALICE (Advertising Limiting Impacts and Carbon Emissions) to assess the impact of campaigns and projects to ensure carbon neutrality by 2030, a reduction by 50% of Scopes 1+2+3 for 2030, Net Zero by 2040 and a shift to 100% renewable energy from source by 2030 (38.8% in 2021). The agency says the tool has allowed it to study emission data available for 80 countries and has over 1000+ projects entered.

The agency declined to discuss its work with fossil fuel clients. According to Publicis, it did not turn down pitches from fossil fuel companies but admitted that not many significant pitches ran in 2022. Instead, Publicis sees oil, gas, and automotive brands as trying to transform themselves. The agency does not want to label the oil industry as a ‘sinner’ since they also aim to become environmentally friendly. We are told the agency aims to partner with these industries and provide consulting services to help them transform into more sustainable businesses. 

We are keeping the grade at ‘good’ because Publicis Media has achieved gender equality at a group level, but we want to see more female representation in individual countries like India. We also would like to see more in-market sustainability initiatives.

Creativity & Effectiveness (C+)

Publicis Media picked up 298 metals or wins at global, regional and local award festivals over the past year. These include 14 awards, including Grand Prix, Best in Show, and Agency of the year.

Publicis Media’s first work for Pepsi was to partner with Tencent Music Entertainment in China to co-create the Jay Chou Live Concert. The agency created a personalised reservation mechanism, virtual tickets, premium brand placements, creative live-gifting formats and commerce to bring the experience to life across nine Tencent apps. 

The campaign was effective, reaching 100 million live audiences, the highest viewership for a live concert and over 1.2 million live engagements. The inclusion of creative live-gifting formats and commerce further enhanced the experience for the audience and provided additional opportunities for engagement.

Publicis Media worked with Nestle in another campaign to promote products like Maggi, Ceregrow, Nan and Lactogen. The campaigns addressed parents’ worry about micronutrient deficiency among children, clarified nutrition information and highlighted the talent of home chefs. The agency created an ‘AskNestle’ platform with sections called ‘Meal Plans’, ‘Growth Tracker’, ‘Food Diary’, ‘Health Recipes’, and ‘Know your Nutrition’ and a 12-episode show called ‘Maggi Kitchen Journeys’.

The 12-episode Maggi Kitchen Journeys reached 95 million homemakers across TV, and ‘AskNestle’ had 198 million impressions, 25 million video views with 92% video completion rates and over 79,000 unique meal plans generated.

For Samsung, to help promote its S21 FE phone, Publicis Media bought 80 billboards in GenZ’s hotspots around Vietnam. Each spot had an experience booth where fans could use S21 FE ‘dual recording feature to sing along with their idols, the outcome is then blasted out onto the billboards.The campaign saw S21 FE Sales grow 16 times compared to 2021. S21 FE ‘Interactive Fansigns’ activation was shown through 9,248 OOH, including digital displays throughout Vietnam. It also gathered 12 million unique fan expressions.

It is nice to see Publicis Media create purposeful work for Nestle and its innovative use of media for Samsung. The agency work for Pepsi was also creative and effective, so we are raising the grade to ‘average’.  The metal haul is significant, but divided across several agencies it’s in line with what we’ve seen elsewhere.

Management (B+)

APAC Groupe CEO Lin-Baden was promoted in 2022 after APAC & MEA CEO Loris Nold moved to an EMEA role as part of a leadership reshuffle. As part of her promotion, Lin-Baden joined the agency’s management body, the Directoire+ and is also part of the Groupe’s global management committee.

Lin-Baden now leads the region with Randhawa (who has significant media chops from her previous role at Mindshare), Acharya, Wee, CEO Australia and New Zealand Michael Rebelo. There are three new additions to her leadership team in new Vietnam CEO Kate Bayona-Garcia, and new Thailand co-CEOs Sorada Sonprasit and Paruj Daorai,

Publicis Media also promoted Jason Tonelli to chief executive officer of Zenith in Australia, handing the role of chief transformation officer to Ian Loon, in addition to his role chief executive officer of media and digital for Singapore, and elevating Vineeth Dhruvan to CEO of Publicis Media in Vietnam.

After it won the Pepsi account, the agency brought back ex-Starcommer Helen Tan to Publicis Media from Mindshare, where she was handling the brand.

As a testament to Lin-Baden’s leadership, Publicis Media earned Southeast Asia Programmatic Agency of the Year, Precision and Vietnam Creative Agency of the Year at Campaign’s Agency of the Year 2022. Starcom took home Silver for Singapore Media Agency of the Year, while Zenith earned a Silver in Thailand and a Bronze in Vietnam for Media Agency of the Year.

While exact figures remain confidential, the agency presents positive statistics regarding reducing staff turnover, with most markets seeing a reduced churn in the APAC region. The agency saw some departures in Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore, and there were no notable new hires in Taiwan, Japan, or Korea.

Like other agencies, Publicis Media saw the pandemic lead to quiet quitting, attrition, and burnout among its employees. To address these issues, Publicis Media developed a targeted talent development programme, Project Roar, which offers online and offline training, career development, and progress tracking. The agency provides access to global training modules and experienced trainers in each market, offering over 70 courses in five primary business disciplines. 

The programme offers fast advancement through a systematic process that includes clearly stated requirements for each role, two yearly promotional reviews, and the option to switch roles. In addition to the talent development program, Publicis provided staff with a ‘Roar’ moment to present their ideas to the leadership team, and 163 winners were promoted and awarded in the Roaring Winner Award Ceremony. 

This helped the agency pick up APAC Talent Development Programme of the Year and APAC Best Culture at Campaign Asia’s AOY awards.

At a lively Campaign’s AOY 2022 in Singapore, a vocal Publicis Groupe contingent made their presence and vibrant culture known, with a strong showing and escalation of wins across the Southeast Asia awards compared to previous years. It is easy to see why we are sticking with an ‘excellent’ grade.

Media Strategy, Planning & Buying Services (36%) Trading, Outcome-based Value solutions & Programmatic (18%) Commerce and Performance Marketing (15%) Data Sciences and ID solutions (powered by Epsilon), putting power into the hands of advertisers for their budgets. Trading, Outcome-based Value solutions & Programmatic (powered by Publicis Media Exchange and Publicis Precision). Commerce & Performance Marketing (powered by Publicis Commerce and Performics) and supercharged by recent acquisitions such as Profitero customised for APAC. BMW General Motors Haleon (previously GSK) Huawei L’Oréal Mondelez PepsiCo Procter & Gamble Reckitt The Walt Disney Company A: If there is one media organisation with momentum today – rising through the ranks of award standings, dominating new business tables and attracting some of the best talents in the industry...it is Publicis Media. A standout year and a year where our offering came of age in all parts of the region, and each region shone on all the above factors.